At just 31 years of age, Elena Gnut, Pastry Chef from Kaliningrad, Russia, is already recognized as one of the world’s most talented cake artists. And looking at her impressive portfolio, it’s easy to see why.

Elena Gnut’s cakes look more like artistic sculptures than treats meant to be eaten. Browsing through her popular Instagram, you often feel like you’ve found the most amazing cake you’ve ever seen, but then you scroll further down and find even more impressive ones. Whether she’s molding the frosting into whimsical shapes or using edible dyes to paint incredible scenes or portraits, the young confectioner is always coming up with new and intriguing ideas that keep her Instagram fans coming back for more.

Jelly cakes don’t really sound very appetizing, or particularly impressive for that matter, but that’s only because you’ve probably never seen one of Siew Heng Boon’s amazing 3D jelly cakes.

Intricately-designed 3D jelly cakes are really popular in South-East Asian countries like Vietnam and Malaysia, and in Mexico, but some of the world’s most amazing such edible masterpieces are actually created by an Australian artist from Sidney. Siew Heng Boon has been making 3D jelly cakes for only two years now, but she’s already considered a master of the trade, and her incredible creations often have people do a double take.

Meet Lulwa, also known as the ‘Million Dollar Bride’, a 120 kilogram-wedding cake shaped like a life-size Arabian bride. “She” was created by Debbie Wingham, ‘the world’s most expensive designer’, and showcased at the 2018 Dubai Bride Show, in the UAE.

Wingham is the creator of some of the most expensive objects of desire in history, including a $16 million shoe, a $4.8 million black diamond dress, and the world’s most expensive wedding cake which was valued at a staggering $67 million. With an estimated value of “only” $1 million, the designer’s latest work, the Million Dollar Bride cake was one of her most affordable projects yet. But what the cake lacked in financial value, it certainly made up in style and realism.

Two years ago, Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin didn’t even know how to bake, but today she is widely regarded as the world’s most talented pie maker. And, believe it or not, she’s entirely self taught.

Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin’s amazing journey into the world of elaborate pies began a couple of years ago, as a New Year’s resolution to cut down on sugar. Pies just seemed like the safest way to satisfy her dessert cravings, but there was just one problem – she didn’t know anything about baking, or cooking in general for that matter. So she dedicated six months to developing her baking skills, and it paid off big-time. These days, Clark-Bojin’s fabulous pies are all the rage on social media and she’s able to make a living by selling how-to guides to like-minded pie enthusiasts who want to bake their own edible works of art.

Chinese patissier Zhou Yi is better known as the “Sugar King” in his native country, and looking at his hand-made cake decorations, it’s easy to see why. Yi can mold fondant into virtually any imaginable shape, and his human figurines are so incredibly detailed that they look more like exquisite porcelain dolls than edible decorations.

Zhou Yi has long been known as one of China’s most talented cake decorators, but after winning three gold medals and two bronze medals at the International Cake Competition, last year, he is now a globally recognized as one of the world’s top patissiers. His entries featured elements of Chinese culture and traditional art, including a mind-blowing figurine of Wu Zetian, China’s first and only female emperor, which was so insanely detailed you could literally count her eyelashes.

Soon after launching her cake design business seven years ago, Maggie Austin was already producing edible works of art for Hollywood parties, royal weddings and even White House Christmas celebrations, and looking at her portfolio, it’s not hard to see why. Her designs, especially the incredibly realistic edible flower decorations, are beyond everything I’ve ever seen.

At first glance, Austin’s flowers look 100% real. In fact, the level of realism is such that no matter how long you stare at them, it’s hard to believe that they are actually hand-made edible decorations created with sugar, waffle paper and food coloring. From simple roses an hydrangeas to her signature peonies, it seems like there’s no flower that ballerina-turned cake designer Maggie Austin can’t reproduce.

Vegetable smoothies are not exactly everyone’s favourite treat, but one amateur artist has come up with a way to make them more appealing – by decorating them with intricate designs, using only natural ingredients.

Hazel Zakaryia‘s edible artworks may not make her smoothies tastier, but they definitely make them prettier to look at. Using only wood skewers and a kitchen knife, she painstakingly paints over the thick fruit and vegetable base with edible “paints” made from ingredients like turmeric, blue matcha, milk, cream and and butterfly pea powder. The results are so impressive that it’s hard to believe Zakaryia is not a professional food artist, but a market analyst who likes to spend her free time entertaining her artistic side.

Tyrion Lannister isn’t just one of the most beloved characters on HBO’s hit series “Game of Thrones”, he is also the inspiration behind one of the most expensive cakes ever made – a 70-pound work of art showing the Halfman sitting on the Iron Throne.

The Broadway Bakery, in Dubai, recently celebrated the new season of “Game of Thrones” by creating an incredibly detailed cake featuring everyone’s favorite imp, Tyrion Lannister. Made primarily of sugar paste and fondant, the edible masterpiece stands four feet tall and weighs a whopping 70 pounds, making it large enough to feed a crowd of 100 – 120 people. But who, apart from his sister Cersei, would have the heart to take a knife to this realistic model of Tyrion?

Harry Kalenberg has a unique hobby – he turns pieces of popcorn into tiny works of art using only colored felt markers and pens. From miniature models of celebrities like Elvis or Donald Trump, to popular cartoon characters and animals, Harry has a gift for spotting the craziest things in a bowl of popcorn.

It all started 28 years ago, when Harry Kalenberg and his wife Esther were sitting on the couch one evening, eating popcorn. At one point, the artist spotted a strange-looking piece of popcorn that resembled a gorilla. His wife wasn’t interested in the discovery, but he wouldn’t let her lack of enthusiasm curb his. He took out a ballpoint pen and started painting the details he saw with his mind’s eye, eventually bringing the popcorn gorilla to life. And that’s how his career as a popcorn artist started.

LeNovelle Cake, a family-run bakery in Jakarta, Indonesia, specializes in epic wedding cakes. From fairy-tale castles to glazed cathedrals and pagodas up to 7 meters tall and complete with detailed turrets, pillars and balconies, these guys can turn the most outlandish architectural design into a magnificent cake.

The world-famous bakery was founded in 1993 as a neighborhood cake business selling birthday cakes to friends and family, but it slowly grew and in 2004 it started selling wedding cakes under the LeNovelle Cake brand. Their designs have been getting more complex every year, and today they can have up to 24 people working 12 hours a day for over a month to complete just one of their sugar-coated masterpieces.

This intricate, lacy wedding dress would make any bride feel beautiful on her big day, but surprisingly, it isn’t meant to be worn. That’s because it’s really a masterfully executed cake, and all the pretty frills and ruffles are actually white icing. But it’s so convincing, you can barely tell that it’s not real, even in close-up photographs.

The remarkable dessert was created by award-winning cake sculptor Sylvia Elba, in collaboration with artist Ilinka Rnic, and Fun N Funky Cakes founder Yvette Marner. It took the talented trio over 300 hours to complete, but in the end, they all agreed that the 70-kg heavy, 170-cm tall hyperrealistic cake-dress was totally worth it. They’re now calling it the world’s first “Weddible Dress”.

Parents are forever telling kids not to play with food, but Japanese artist Makoto Asano does just that. He carves smiling faces into tubs of Häagen-Dazs ice cream, using nothing but the flimsy plastic spoon they come with.

Asano’s ice cream faces may look childish to some people, but there’s a certain whimsical quality about them that makes them stand out. Each face is carved out of a different flavor of ice cream, with sauces and toppings forming features such as hair, mustaches, or beards.

Talented Turkish artist Hasan Kale specializes in creating micro paintings on incredibly small objects, like butterfly wings and snail’s shells. In his latest project, he’s taken his micro painting skills to a whole new level – by using food as a canvas.

The list of edible objects that Kale has painted on includes peanut husks, split almonds, banana chips, fruit seeds, beans, onion peels, mini breadsticks, and even bits of chocolate. As long as it’s tiny, it appears that Kale will paint on it. He uses an extremely fine paint brush tip and a magnifying glass to paint intricate landscapes of his native Istanbul.

Through Kale’s work, you can enjoy a picturesque view of the Nusretiye Mosque and other scenes from Istanbul on a Milka Square, painted with such amazing detail. Of course, most of his work is microscopic, and therefore not very visible to the naked eye. You’d need some sort of magnification to be able to see the paintings clearly.

Sweets are not just meant for eating, they can be used for art too! Artist Michelle Wibowo recently used tasty treats to create a life-size replica of Michelangelo’s famous Sistine Chapel painting – The Creation of Adam. Measuring 18’9’’ by 9’2’’, it features 10,000 marshmallows and half a billion cake sprinkles. It’s been rightly dubbed, ‘The Baking of Adam’.

Michelle took 168 hours to complete the project that marks the 450th anniversary of Michelangelo’s death. “Britain is currently gripped by baking fever with a real emphasis on unique designs and showmanship,” said the 35-year-old artist who baked the masterpiece for Cake Angels. “When we learnt of Michelangelo’s anniversary celebrations, we really wanted to join in. We decided to challenge the boundaries of cake design by immortalizing his most heavenly creation in our own special way. No celebration is complete without cake and we really hope that Michelangelo would have given us his official seal of approval.”

According to creative director Alex Balzaretti, “Cake Angles is all about inspiring the baker through creativity and innovation. We’ve been looking for a project for a long time that enabled us to do that and it became apparent that 2014 was going to be a historic year in the celebration of the life of Michelangelo. His most important and probably prized work of art is The Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and what more heavenly creation to be picked.”

Tokyo-based artist Takyo Kiyota uses sushi rolls as a canvas for her art. Believe it or not, she never knows exactly what her edible artworks are going to look like, relying only on visualization when expertly placing the colored grains of rice inside the roll.

Just like in regular makizushi, or “rolled sushi,”, the ingredients in Takayo Kiyota’s rolls are laid lengthwise, bottom to top, then rolled shut in a sheet of seaweed. The loaf-shaped piece of sushi looks unimpressive on the outside, but slicing cross-sections reveals amazingly detailed works of art. From edible replicas of famous paintings and popular character of Japanese anime to gadgets like the Apple iPhone and Facebook “likes”, it seems there’s nothing Takayo can’t replicate in her makizushi rolls. But getting every grain of rice in just the right place seems like an impossible task, and the artist herself admits the slightest shift of an ingredient or overly exerted force when wrapping can completely throw things off. “I never know what the inside looks like so I’m never sure if it will come out the way I imagined. And I can’t make edits once it’s done,” Takayo, a.k.a Tama-chan, says. “It’s always a special moment when I make the first incision to reveal the image.”